Salazar, Jaquette, & Han (forthcoming) analyzed off-campus recruiting visits made in 2017 by 15 public research universities
This chapter analyzes visits to private high schools by public research universities in comparison to visits to private high schools by selective private universities.
This chapter contributes to scholarship on the “privatization” of public higher education by connecting this literature to ….
McClure, Barringer, & Brown (2019) review scholarship on privatization in higher education
The traditional mission of selective private universities vs. public research universities
Therefore, we conceptualize recruiting visits to private high schools as an ideal-type behavioral example of public flagship universities engaging in a behavior associated with the traditional social reproduction mission of selective private non-profit universities
Analyses are motivated by three research questions
For each research questions we look for: similarities and differences within public research universities; similarities and differences between public and private universities
## speed dist
## Min. : 4.0 Min. : 2.00
## 1st Qu.:12.0 1st Qu.: 26.00
## Median :15.0 Median : 36.00
## Mean :15.4 Mean : 42.98
## 3rd Qu.:19.0 3rd Qu.: 56.00
## Max. :25.0 Max. :120.00
This section provides context for our analyses of off-campus recruiting visits. First, we situate off-campus recruiting within the broader set of marketing and recruiting interventions in higher education and review what market research says about off-campus recruiting.
The “enrollment funnel” – depicted in Figure 2.1 – is a conceptual heuristic that identifies stages in the student recruitment process (prospects, inquiries, applicants, accepted applicants, and enrolled students). The enrollment management industry uses the enrollment funnel to inform marketing and recruiting interventions that target specific stages.
Figure 2.1: The enrollment funnel
What do we know about off-campus recruiting from market research?
| Activity | Private | Public |
|---|---|---|
| Travel | 17 | 16 |
| Student search (purchased lists) | 14 | 12 |
| Prospective student communications | 13 | 17 |
| Events | 12 | 11 |
| Recruitment publications | 11 | 15 |
| Web services and digital advertising | 11 | 13 |
| Traditional advertising | 6 | 6 |
| International recruitment | 5 | 3 |
| Transfer recruitment | 4 | 4 |
| Other | 8 | 3 |
We review empirical scholarship from sociology that analyzes recruiting by colleges and universities, emphasizing scholarship that analyzes off-campus recruiting and scholarship that considers private high schools.
A case study literature in sociology analyzes recruiting, often as part of a broader analysis of enrollment management or college access (e.g., Holland, 2019; Cookson & Persell, 1985; Cottom, 2017; Khan, 2010, 2011; McDonough, 1997; Posecznick, 2017; Stevens, 2007).
Stevens (2007), an ethnography of the admissions office at a selective private liberal arts college, highlights the relational function of visits.
Khan (2010) analyzed recruiting from the perspective of an elite private boarding school in order to understand “how such schools continue to get comparatively under-qualified students into top colleges and universities” (p. 98).
Rationale for treating off-campus recruiting visits as a relationship that can be analyzed using social network methods [from draft chapter]
To summarize, Stevens (2007) finds that off-campus recruiting visits are important for the maintenance of strong relationships between a college and a high school. Strong relationships enable colleges and schools to negotiate and send trustworthy information to one another. In the absence of strong relationships, it is less likely that a college admissions counselor will “take the call” of a high school guidance counselor (Khan, 2010, 2011).
Building on these ideas, we reason that the presence of a recruiting visit between a college and a high school is an indicator that the college and the high school have a relationship. First, the fact that the college made the effort to visit suggests that the college wants to enroll students from the high school. Second, the fact that the high school hosted the visit suggests that the high school likely views the college as a desirable destination for some of its students. Third, the presence of the recruiting visit suggests the probability of additional interactions (e.g., phone calls).
Our broader project collected data on off-campus recruiting visits made by a convenience sample of colleges and universities during the 2017 calendar year.
The data collection sample comes from three different lists of postsecondary institutions:
For each of these institutions, we investigated their admissions website for pages that posted their upcoming off-campus recruiting visits.
The analysis sample for this chapter consists of:
Number of events by type and in-state, out-of-state for public research universities institutions
Number of events by type and in-state, out-of-state for private institutions
Actual versus proportional visits to out-of-state private high schools for public research universities
Characteristics of private HS visited by public institutions
Characteristics of private HS visited by private institutions
1-mode network for public institutions, colored by cluster
1-mode network for public institutions, out-of-state visits only, colored by cluster
1-mode network for private and public universities, out-of-state visits only for public universities, colored by cluster
Borgatti, S. P. (2008). 2-mode concepts in social network analysis. In Encyclopedia of complexity and system science.
Campbell, A. (2017). Higher education marketing: How to master your admissions funnel. Retrieved from https://hop-online.com/blog/higher-education-marketing-admissions-process/
Clinedinst, M., & Koranteng, A.-M. (2017). 2017 state of college admission. National Association of College Admissions Officers.
Cookson, P. W., & Persell, C. H. (1985). Preparing for power : America’s elite boarding schools (pp. x, 260p.). New York: Basic Books.
Cottom, T. M. (2017). Lower ed: The troubling rise of for-profit colleges in the new economy (p. 228 pages). The New Press.
Holland, M. M. (2019). Divergent paths to college: Race, class, and inequality in high schools. Rutgers University Press. https://doi.org/10.36019/9780813590288
Jaquette, O., & Curs, B. R. (2015). Creating the out-of-state university: Do public universities increase nonresident freshman enrollment in response to declining state appropriations? Research in Higher Education, 56(6), 535–565. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11162-015-9362-2
Khan, S. R. (2010). Getting in: How elite schools play the college game (pp. 97–113). Rowman & Littlefield.
Khan, S. R. (2011). Privilege: The making of an adolescent elite at st. Paul’s school (p. 232 pages). Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
McClure, K. R., Barringer, S. N., & Brown, J. T. (2019). Privatization as the new normal in higher education. In L. W. Perna (Ed.), Higher education: Handbook of theory and research: Volume 35 (pp. 1–78). Cham: Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11743-6_13-1
McDonough, P. M. (1997). Choosing colleges: How social class and schools structure opportunity (pp. xi, 174p.). Albany: State University of New York Press.
Noel-Levitz, R. (2020). 2020 cost of recruiting an undergraduate student report (Report). Ruffalo Noel-Levitz. Retrieved from https://learn.ruffalonl.com/rs/395-EOG-977/images/2020_CostRecruiting_Report.pdf
Posecznick, A. (2017). Selling hope and college merit, markets, and recruitment in an unranked school. Cornell University Press. https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501708404
Ruffalo Noel-Levitz. (2018). 2018 marketing and student recruitment report of effective practices. Ruffalo Noel-Levitz. Retrieved from http://learn.ruffalonl.com/rs/395-EOG-977/images/RNL_2018_Student_Recruitment_Marketing_Report_EM-19.pdf
Salazar, K., Jaquette, O., & Han, C. (forthcoming). Coming soon to a neighborhood near you? Off-campus recruiting by public research universities. American Educational Research Journal.
Stevens, M. L. (2007). Creating a class: College admissions and the education of elites (p. 308 p.). Harvard University Press.
3.2 Social network analysis
A social network consists of a set of actors – referred to as “vertices” – and the connections – referred to as “edges” between these actors.
3.2.1 Two-mode network objects
In our school-college two-mode network:
Two mode network of colleges (mode 1) visiting private high schools (mode 2), nodes colored by community cluster
3.2.2 One-mode network objects
Two-mode networks are often analyzed as one-mode networks for simplicity (Borgatti, 2008)
One-mode network of private universities, edges between two universities weighted by the number of high schools they both visited, nodes colored by community cluster
3.2.3 Ego networks
A limitation of our data collection and analysis is that it is based on a convenience sample of colleges and universities, as described above. Thus, for each college and university in our sample, we know all the private high schools they visited (assuming no measurement error). However, for each private high school in our sample, we only know visits they received from the set of 42 colleges/universities in our sample. Given this limitation, it may be useful to think of our data collection as resulting in 40 “ego networks.”
Ego networks
Ego network of Emory University, nodes colored by geographic region
Community detection